Power proposals

Releasing Rs11 billion to independent power producers is only a stop-gap arrangement and does not address core issues.

WAH CANTT: This is with reference to your front page report of October 13 on the government’s proposed measures to cope with the electricity crisis. It seems that what has been proposed has already been tried and tested, and it failed to deliver any tangible result. In fact, there is hardly anything new in the measures. More importantly, they do not address the very important issue of circular debt, without which there can be no permanent solution to the acute electricity shortage that is currently affecting the economy.

In the wake of countrywide protests last week, the government did release Rs11 billion which enabled the independent power producers to resume generation of electricity and this helped bridge the demand-supply gap to a great extent. However, this is only a stop-gap arrangement.

Also, the issue of rental power projects is something that should be scrutinised in some detail, since most of the power produced is very expensive and not really needed because the installed generation capacity of 19,000 MW is well over peak summer demand.

Unless these issues are tackled, cosmetic measures as announced on October 12, will not have any significant impact.

Raziq Hussain

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2011.